The Story
of Saville
Ah me! it had been but a struggle all through, a moiling and rigorous life
From the early days on the niggard farm, the petty ignoble strife
’Gainst narrow prejudice, ignorance, greed, to wrest for himself a chance
For study and travel, for buffeting fate and conquering circumstance;
Then years in the studios foreign and quaint, when salient and eager his mind
Grasped and garnered all manner of truths—except that he had not dined;
But that’s a detail, a mere trifle—the worshipping student will find
Diviner delight, a more rapturous joy in an intellectual stride,
A tint, or a chord, or a line in an ode, than in aught under heaven beside;
And then the homecoming, the hopeful return to the generous land of his birth,
The vehement passion for art, the desire to show what he was worth,
Kaleidoscope pageants of fancies circling and swift in his thought,
Tissues of gossamer golden freaked, with pearls and emeralds wrought,
A bright panoramic succession, like raindrops of April clear,
